(educate a noob) can you teach me a little about bit depth and latency

[bob1313134]

I have win7, xonard dgx, dt 990 and desktop speakers. I have the option to change things such as bit depth, latency, sample rate. What do these terms mean? What's the best quality for audiophile headphones?

Also what does SPIF mean?

Really appreciate the help. Thank you!

 

[Ken g6]

I have the option to change things such as bit depth, latency, sample rate. What do these terms mean?

OK, here's a graph from Wikipedia:

The red line is the original audio. The blue dots are how it's digitally encoded. Increasing bit depth makes the blue dots more precise in terms of amplitude (the vertical scale). Increasing the sample rate means more blue dots in a given time (the horizontal scale). Latency is usually about keeping things in sync between audio and video.

Also what does SPIF mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/PDIF. (A digital audio cable.)

Sorry, I'm not an audiophile, so I have no headphone recommendations.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Most of the audio you play back will be 16-bit samples, 44kHz sample rate, so you probably won't see much benefit from setting your system higher.

Not much of a downside either, 'course. But if you think you're being blown away by the quality increase, you're probably placeboing yourself.

 

[corkyg]

Also what does SPIF mean?

In the context of audio, I think you mean SPDIF.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-spdif-connection/82

Google is your friend.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

S/PDIF means digital output.

Audio is stored digitally. What you hear is analog. At some point, that digital data has to be converted back to analog. (See: the waveform in Ken's graph.)

Your computer has onboard digital/analog (D/A) converters which are used to drive the analog sound output. They are typically of the cheap-but-not-terrible variety, but at the same time they're in a cramped computer case where they can get a lot of interference; particularly from fans and HDD motors.

The digital output allows you to feed a digital signal to the external D/A converter. This means 1) you don't need a sound card for better sound (1s are 1s and 0s are 0s, so it's a moot point) 2) you can use a D/A converter of any type, quality, or expense, with (hopefully) a design that is resistant to interference 3) the optical/digital cables themselves are (basically) immune to interference from other sources, so you can run them over long distances without regard to what other cables they share a channel with.

But there's rapidly diminishing cost/benefit once you spend more than about $100 on an external DAC.

 

[DigDog]

if you change sample rate, lets say 100khz, and you are playing back a regular 44khz recording, such as a mp3 file, nothing weird happens. i seriously doubt you would be able to - even if you tried really hard - find a sample recorded higher than 44k. afaik today the maximum in existence, outside of labs, is 192khz sampling.
this is not the same as 192bit.

i can't even imagine how enormous a 100khz recording is, and anyway, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a regular 44k unless you were trained, on a very expensive audio system, and at very loud volumes.

bit sampling is as described above. i think 32 bit is what normal pc and cd audio does, with super audio cd (SACD) at 64 bit.
changing these to a higher value doesnt do anything weird, except that:
1) it takes more cpu power
2) some badly coded softwares go crazy if you use anything except the standard. same goes for sample rate(i.e. 44khz).

latency is a very vague term, it could mean anything depending on yoru application, but since you have "bit depth" there, i assume you are fiddling with some recording controls.
in this case, latency is .. lag. or just latency. "takes so much time to interpret and reproduce the sound". useful to have this very low if you are for example, playing your electric guitar through your computer, or monitoring and adjusting (mixing) audio in real time.
uses a fuckload of cpu cycles. can be set too low and your pc borks out.

generally, none of these settings you should touch unless you know specifically why.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Normal pc and cd audio is 16 bit, not 32. SACD uses a different tech and isn't directly comparable.

/nitpick

 

[DigDog]

eh. bitrate settings on pc is actually something i haven't looked at in ages. wouldn't even look at it on proper audio software (Logic, or ProTools) because changing the defaults can lead to incompatibility with various plugins, reproductions, playback.

i'm actually a proponent of *much higher* sampling rate, but its one of those things the whole industry has to adopt if you want to use it (or at least just one company, but they need full vertical penetration);
unfortunately, it's hard to convince people that using 200khz has benefits, when most (poorly conducted) studies show that 44khz is plenty.

(please dont ask me to explain why; it involves high frequencies modulating each other. it's complicated even for me and i'm not getting paid)

 

[Cerb]

I have win7, xonard dgx, dt 990 and desktop speakers. I have the option to change things such as bit depth, latency, sample rate. What do these terms mean? What's the best quality for audiophile headphones?

The rate of the source material, which is 44.1kHz for CD; unless you must play back at 48kHz multiples. If playing back a higher frequency, you may or may not hear a difference. Any re-sampling has the chance to cause audible errors, especially real-time resampling using limited size buffers. Note that if forcing the rate in the driver, some games rely on using 48kHz for audio, and may glitch if forced to another value, instead of allowing any. DVDs may be 48kHz or 96kHz, as can BD.

For bit depth, it really doesn't matter, but setting it to 24-bit won't hurt, if you have an option. That gives more bits for volume control and the like to have errors with, that will be too low for you possibly be able to hear. At 0dBFS (full volume), increasing bit depth merely pads zeros to the end.

Also what does SPIF mean?

Sony/Philips Digital Interface (you could have Googled it).

3) the optical/digital cables themselves are (basically) immune to interference from other sources, so you can run them over long distances without regard to what other cables they share a channel with.

Optical are, but that's TOSLINK. Coax digital cables are very much not, and will happily create ground loops, and sometimes other oddities, if permitted (S/PDIF, like RCA, was not designed for the common use cases it eventually found itself in).

 

[DigDog]

fun fact: never used a spdif in my life.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Optical are, but that's TOSLINK. Coax digital cables are very much not, and will happily create ground loops, and sometimes other oddities, if permitted (S/PDIF, like RCA, was not designed for the common use cases it eventually found itself in).

Oops, you caught me.

I've only used TOSLink myself, and have seen it integrated on a lot of motherboards now. But I've also seen enough products with both that I must have gotten the names confused. :whiste: